Getting Started with ColorWelcome| 00:00 | Hi! Welcome to lynda.com Getting
Started with Apple Color. I am Robbie
| | 00:04 | Carman. First thing's first. I am so
excited to start to explore Color with you.
| | 00:09 | And I know that after going
through this course, you are going to be just
| | 00:11 | as excited as I am. Before we jump into
the actual App, I would like to spend a
| | 00:15 | few minutes talking about a couple of
things. Who I am, why I love Color, and
| | 00:20 | what you are going to get out of this course.
| | 00:22 | So who am I? Well I am a colorist,
I have worked on major shows for networks
| | 00:26 | like Discovery Channel, National
Geographic. But I have also done a lot of
| | 00:29 | corporate work. I am an online editor,
which basically means I am the nit-picky
| | 00:32 | guy of the end of the edit pipeline who
works on a show before it goes to air.
| | 00:36 | I am an Apple Certified Trainer. I am
certified in all levels of Final Cut Pro,
| | 00:41 | Motion, of course, Color, Aperture
and probably, a few others that I am not
| | 00:44 | even remembering right now. I am an
author. I have written a couple of books
| | 00:48 | about Final Cut Pro and I have also
been a technical editor on several books
| | 00:51 | about color correction. And I am a
postproduction consultant. I have helped
| | 00:56 | major networks like Discovery and
National Geographic, integrate Final Cut Pro
| | 00:59 | Studio workflow into their own workflows.
| | 01:02 | So why do I love Color? Well, I love
Color because it's a mix of the technical
| | 01:07 | and creative. There is a certain aspect
of it that's technical problem solving;
| | 01:10 | fixing shots that are bad. But then
there is also the aspect of the creative
| | 01:15 | where we can really make shots look very,
very cool by applying looks and doing
| | 01:19 | other new things to them.
| | 01:20 | I get to be the unsung hero and what I
mean by that is because if I do my job
| | 01:24 | right in Color, nobody ever notices my
work. Well, hopefully they do. But the
| | 01:28 | point is, is that I get to really do
a lot of behind the scenes work that
| | 01:32 | really makes a project shine.
Creating for everyone; finally, we have a
| | 01:36 | solution in Color that allows everyone
to color grade. No longer we are limited
| | 01:41 | to million dollar solutions that only
be a league of the postproduction, well,
| | 01:44 | can afford.
| | 01:45 | Integrated Workflow; this is perhaps
the best thing I like about Color because
| | 01:49 | now we have a solution that's
integrated with the rest of the Final Cut Studio
| | 01:52 | applications. And of course, it's
from Apple. And how can you not love a
| | 01:56 | product when it is from Apple?
| | 01:59 | So what is this course all about? Well,
this course is understanding the color
| | 02:03 | correction process. It's about getting
projects form Final Cut Pro to Color.
| | 02:08 | It's about learning the basics of the
Color interface. What things are called
| | 02:12 | and what they do? It's about making
primary and secondary corrections to our
| | 02:16 | footage. And ultimately, it's about
getting our project from Color back to
| | 02:20 | Final Cut Pro.
| | 02:21 | So once again, I am very excited for
the opportunity to start exploring Color
| | 02:25 | with you. In the next two lessons, we
will get some background information
| | 02:29 | about what is color correction? And
take a brief look at color correction in
| | 02:32 | Final Cut Pro versus Color. And then
in the next five lessons, we will jump
| | 02:36 | into Color and get ours hand dirty.
Thanks again for joining me, Robbie Carman,
| | 02:40 | and lynda.com in Getting
Started with Apple Color.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding color correction| 00:00 | Welcome back. In this short lesson, we
are going to take a look at the reasons
| | 00:03 | why we are color correct in grade
footage. This might seem like a no brainer
| | 00:07 | but I think it's a good idea to get on
the same page by what we are trying to
| | 00:09 | accomplish with the color correction
process. Of course, you may have your own
| | 00:13 | reasons for correcting your footage
like, making it look as bad as possible
| | 00:16 | because you are really fed up with the
project; that's an issue I can't really
| | 00:19 | help you with. What I can help you with
is understanding the correction process
| | 00:22 | a bit further.
| | 00:23 | Correcting for problems. As a general
rule of thumb, color correcting is about
| | 00:27 | 70% fixing problems and probably only
about 30% of the sexy stuff, creating looks.
| | 00:32 | But what are those problems?
| | 00:33 | Well first we have contrast problems,
we have color balance problems and these
| | 00:38 | are the problems that people think
most of when they think about color
| | 00:41 | correction; a blue clip versus a
yellow clip and so on and so forth. We have
| | 00:45 | saturation problems where we have
clips that are under- or over-saturated. We
| | 00:50 | have problems with broadcast legality.
Now broadcast legality are issues that a
| | 00:53 | clip is not suitable for broadcast,
maybe because it's too bright, it's too
| | 00:57 | saturated and so on and so forth. But
different broadcasters have different
| | 01:00 | rules about this and it's
something that we need to pay attention to.
| | 01:02 | So what are the Contrast Corrections?
And what are those specific tasks that we
| | 01:05 | need to do? Most footage needs some
degree of contrast adjustment. Even if it's
| | 01:10 | a nice shot, chances are it might to
need to have it's contrast adjusted;
| | 01:13 | little brighter, little darker, and so
on. Contrast corrections fix under and
| | 01:18 | over exposed footage. Contrast
adjustments can also be used to create looks. So
| | 01:23 | in another words, if you want to have
a scene look like it was shot at night,
| | 01:26 | you could adjust it's contrast to make
it darker or you could brighten it up to
| | 01:29 | make it look like it was shot at noon
time. Contrast adjustments generally
| | 01:33 | happen before color adjustments.
| | 01:35 | Color balance corrections. Well, color
balance corrections range from primary
| | 01:39 | corrections like, improper white
balance to secondary corrections like,
| | 01:43 | adjusting the color of skin tone.
Saturation Corrections are corrections that
| | 01:47 | fix under or over saturated footage. You,
probably, all have seen footage that
| | 01:50 | has somebody with a red shirt on and
that red appears to bleed into other
| | 01:54 | colors. Probably, because it's over
saturated. And I am sure you have seen a
| | 01:57 | clip that is flat and dull. They might
look that way because it's under-saturated.
| | 02:02 | `Broadcast Legality; well, as I
said most broadcasters have rules about
| | 02:05 | contrast, saturation, and other
technical aspects of the footage. And adhering
| | 02:10 | to broadcast aspects is something
that we always want to do. Now if you are
| | 02:13 | asking yourself, well hey, I am never
going to be broadcasting something, why
| | 02:16 | do I need to do it? Well, even if your
footage is not intended for broadcast,
| | 02:20 | it's a good idea to adhere to these
rules. Because if you adhere to them,
| | 02:23 | chances are your footage will look
better because these rules were established
| | 02:26 | to make footage well, look good.
| | 02:28 | Another aspect of the color Correction
process is creating looks. And when we
| | 02:32 | create looks with the color
correction process, what we are really talking
| | 02:35 | about is the sexy part of color
correction. This is the part that everybody
| | 02:38 | always thinks about, you know, the Matrix
or Steven Soderberg with his blue looks.
| | 02:43 | And it really is the sexy part of the
process. But it's only a small part of it.
| | 02:47 | A large reason that modern color
software is so complicated and as feature rich
| | 02:50 | it is, it's for the specific task
of creating looks. Years ago, color
| | 02:54 | correction was done with just a couple
of knobs on a simple little piece of
| | 02:57 | hardware. Today applications like
Color provide us a lot of options mainly for
| | 03:01 | creating looks. When you create a look,
it's a really combination of primary
| | 03:06 | and secondary corrections.
That's important to remember.
| | 03:09 | Continuity. Well, a large part of a
colorist's role is creating a visual
| | 03:13 | continuity, having one shot match
another. Often the term scene-to-scene color
| | 03:18 | correction is used to describe this
process. And continuity corrections apply
| | 03:23 | looks in a consistent and logical way.
And what I mean by that is, let's say we
| | 03:27 | have a show that has an interviewee
and the interview appears three times.
| | 03:31 | Well, the first time that it appears,
it's blue; second time it appears, it's
| | 03:34 | yellow; and the third time, oh! I don't
know. It's super saturated. Obviously,
| | 03:37 | those three clips don't look like
they are the same clip. So when I apply
| | 03:41 | Continuity adjustments, I am performing
corrections so all of those clips look
| | 03:44 | like they were the same clip.
| | 03:46 | So correction versus grading; this is
something that you hear a lot about.
| | 03:50 | These terms are often used
interchangeably, although some people, the color
| | 03:54 | geeks out there, like to use the word
grading all the time. But sometimes there
| | 03:57 | is a difference.
| | 03:59 | Grading can refer to applying looks
while correction can refer to merely just
| | 04:03 | fixing problems. But as I said, they
can be used interchangeably. The important
| | 04:07 | thing to remember though is that in
Color, corrections refer to adjustments
| | 04:11 | made in a room while a grade refers to
sum of adjustments from all rooms. Let
| | 04:15 | me say that again. In Color,
corrections are adjustments happening in
| | 04:18 | individual room while a grade refers
to the sum of adjustments made from all
| | 04:23 | rooms. That's an important thing to remember.
| | 04:24 | Next we will take a brief look at
color correction in Color versus Final Cut
| | 04:28 | Pro because after all, you might be wondering
what this whole Color app is all about.
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| Understanding the differences between Color and Final Cut Pro| 00:00 | I promise we will get into the
application soon but here's our last Keynote
| | 00:03 | presentation. If you are anything
like me, you might be asking yourself,
| | 00:06 | "I have been doing just fine correcting
footage with Final Cut Pro. Who cares about Color?"
| | 00:10 | I will be the first to tell you
that initially, I thought much of
| | 00:13 | the Color hype had to do with marketing.
But having worked with Final Cut Pro
| | 00:16 | extensively as an online editor and
colorist, as well as having worked with other
| | 00:20 | systems like the Da Vinci 2K, I would
say, Color's where it's at if you
| | 00:23 | can afford a slight deprecation in real
-time output, compared to these million
| | 00:27 | dollar systems. In fact, almost every
colorist I have talked to in the past
| | 00:30 | year has preferred Color's tool set
than that of other major color correction
| | 00:33 | tools. In this short lesson, we will
take a look at comparing Final Cut Pro's
| | 00:37 | color corrections tools to that of Color.
| | 00:39 | So what is color correction of Final
Cut Pro all about? Well, the thing about
| | 00:43 | color correction in Final Cut Pro is
that you will never leave the Final Cut
| | 00:45 | Pro interface. It's one place to ingest,
edit, perform effects, transitions,
| | 00:50 | and color correct. It begs the question
though because this application does a
| | 00:55 | lot of things, is that color correction
good enough? For some people, it might be;
| | 00:59 | for others who long
for more, it might not be.
| | 01:02 | Is the Y'CbCr model easier? Uh, what
did I just say? This is a color model that
| | 01:07 | Final Cut Pro uses. Essentially, what
it means is that color in contrast or
| | 01:11 | brightness and darkness can be
adjusted separately from one another. The Y is
| | 01:15 | the Luma component, while Cb and Cr
are the color components of the signal.
| | 01:20 | It's a multi-task application, like I
said. So it doesn't do just one thing,
| | 01:25 | it does a lot of things. And for some
people, they might want an application that
| | 01:28 | does a lot of things. And kind of a big
thing is that there are no limitations
| | 01:33 | for files within Studio. Because
Final Cut Pro is the heart of the Final Cut
| | 01:37 | Studio, it accepts files from all the
other applications whereas Color doesn't,
| | 01:40 | as we'll see. And a big one for some colorists
is that it has limited control surface support.
| | 01:46 | A control surface is just a
piece of hardware that gives you tactile
| | 01:49 | control over parameters and functions
in the application. In a Final Cut Pro,
| | 01:53 | we don't really have that for
color correction specifically.
| | 01:56 | So what is color correction in Color
all about? It has a much broader range of
| | 02:00 | tools obviously, because it's called
Color and that's what it does. It's color
| | 02:04 | correction and grading. Its interface
and the workflow are geared to specific
| | 02:08 | task, well, namely color correction.
But even to break it down further than
| | 02:11 | there, primary color correction,
secondary color correction and so on.
| | 02:15 | It uses the RGB color model, which a lot
of people think is more natural. That's
| | 02:19 | how a lot of computer applications work,
it's kind of how we see the world and
| | 02:23 | it's not as limited in some ways as
the color model that Final Cut Pro uses.
| | 02:27 | Currently, Color has limited
integration with the rest of Final Cut Studio.
| | 02:31 | It accepts projects from Final Cut Pro,
it will go back and forth with some files
| | 02:34 | but some other files like
generators from Final Cut Pro, Motion files,
| | 02:38 | etcetera, are not accepted at this time.
For some, this might be a big limitation.
| | 02:42 | It has control surface support. For a
die hard colorist like myself, control
| | 02:47 | surface support is a must. Because I get
tactile control over the parameters in
| | 02:51 | Color, I can work much, much faster
than point and click. And Color does have a
| | 02:57 | little intangibles to it and what I
mean by that is the intangibles about Color
| | 03:00 | are the fact that you are using
a dedicated color application.
| | 03:04 | If a client walked into a room when you
are color correcting in Final Cut Pro,
| | 03:06 | sure it might be able to do the job
just fine, but most clients think about
| | 03:09 | Final Cut Pro as an editor, not as a
finishing solution that Color is. And so if
| | 03:14 | you are working in a Color project,
have Color open and have a hardware control
| | 03:17 | surface, your client walks in and goes,
ooh! Ahh! And therefore, you raise your
| | 03:21 | value to that client.
But it's an intangible, like I said.
| | 03:23 | So what are the limitations of color
correcting in Final Cut Pro? First, the
| | 03:27 | interface is not geared completely
towards color correction. As we mentioned,
| | 03:31 | Final Cut Pro does a lot of things and
that can be a big downer because it's
| | 03:34 | not geared specifically towards color
correction. The Color Corrector 3-way is
| | 03:39 | the tool to provide primary and
secondary corrections. And maybe you're a Final Cut
| | 03:43 | Pro guru and you're saying, well, that's
not true. And you are kind of right. There
| | 03:46 | are other tools in Final Cut Pro that
help me color correct. But for the most
| | 03:49 | part, the Color Corrector 3-way is
the tool that most colorist would use to
| | 03:52 | correct footage.
| | 03:54 | In Final Cut Pro, you manually have to
build some effects like film effects,
| | 03:57 | which in Color are really one button
pushes. Correction tracking is very
| | 04:02 | cumbersome in Final Cut Pro, and what I
mean by tracking a correction is having
| | 04:05 | a correction follow a subject around
on the screen. In Final Cut Pro, you end
| | 04:09 | up having to do this with dozens if
not hundreds of keyframes, which can be a pain.
| | 04:13 | So of course, Color is not perfect.
There are some limitations in Color. First
| | 04:17 | and foremost, the biggest one is
that Text, Motion, LiveType files, stills
| | 04:22 | like JPEGs, Tiffs, and other Final Cut
Pro generators do not appear in Color.
| | 04:26 | Although we will talk about shortly
ways that this can be overcome. Because
| | 04:30 | Color is a task specific application,
there is not really any editing or
| | 04:33 | digitizing. Instead it relies on Final
Cut Pro to perform those tasks. Filters,
| | 04:38 | transitions and supers are not
previewed or rendered by Color. The only
| | 04:42 | exception to that is the Color
Corrector 3-way, which is translated into a
| | 04:45 | correction in Color. But everything
else doesn't come through to Color.
| | 04:49 | It might show up in Color but like I said,
it's neither previewed nor rendered there.
| | 04:54 | A big limitation in Color is no
FireWire output. Many users work with FireWire
| | 04:59 | based cameras or decks, or maybe you
even have an AJA Io, which is a FireWire
| | 05:04 | interface box. Currently Color will not
support these devices. The only way to
| | 05:09 | get output from your Color system to an
external monitor right now is via a PCI
| | 05:13 | card. And for a lot of people that's
going to be a big limitation but trust me,
| | 05:16 | it's something that Apple probably
has heard about once or twice and
| | 05:19 | probably will work on very soon.
| | 05:21 | I would like to think about Color as
the colorist's wish. And what I mean by that
| | 05:24 | is if you spend more than 40% of your
time correcting footage for exposure
| | 05:28 | and/or color balance issues, choose
Color. The toolset are available in
| | 05:32 | Color is geared specifically for
correction and you will find yourself being
| | 05:35 | able to work a lot faster and a lot
more efficiently, if you choose Color.
| | 05:39 | Another big reason to choose Color and
I think this is a big one for a lot of
| | 05:42 | colorists, is that you will require
an intuitive tactile control surface.
| | 05:46 | Remember, a control surface is just a
piece of hardware that gives you tactile
| | 05:49 | control over parameters and functions
within Color. And the next thing is just
| | 05:53 | to expand your horizons. Even if you
don't consider yourself a colorist, Color
| | 05:57 | provides the tool set for expanded
color correction versus Final Cut Pro.
| | 06:01 | Color for the most part is geared
towards on task color correction and grading.
| | 06:05 | What I mean by that is Color is an
application build from the ground up
| | 06:08 | specifically to do color correction and
grading. Unlike Final Cut Pro, which is
| | 06:12 | meant to do a lot of different things.
And by becoming a master of Color,
| | 06:17 | you will be able to provide your expert
services. This may be another revenue
| | 06:20 | stream for you in your business or it
might just mean that you have another
| | 06:24 | skill set that you can
provide to any given project.
| | 06:26 | So now that we have established some
basic info, we are ready to jump into
| | 06:29 | Color. Actually we are going to take a
quick pit stop in Final Cut Pro first to
| | 06:33 | understand what goes to Color and how
it goes there. Then we will explore the
| | 06:37 | basics of the Color interface.
Yep, this is going to be exciting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sending files from Final Cut Pro to Color| 00:00 | So chances are if you are wanting to
learn Color, you have been exposed to
| | 00:03 | Final Cut Pro. Maybe you are a
seasoned Final Cut Pro editor or a beginner,
| | 00:08 | either way that's fine. The point is
most Color workflows start in Final Cut
| | 00:12 | Pro. This makes sense if you think
about it because Final Cut Pro is the
| | 00:15 | centerpiece of Final Cut Studio. And
this is where we ingest, edit, add effects
| | 00:20 | and transitions and where output happens.
| | 00:22 | In this lesson, we will start in
Final Cut Pro and talk about prepping the
| | 00:25 | sequence for Color. Talk about some
things to be aware of and then we will
| | 00:29 | actually send a sequence to Color. If
you are not a Final Cut Pro user, have no
| | 00:33 | fear. The steps that we will do here
are pretty straightforward and simple.
| | 00:37 | The first thing I want to do is double-
click on the exercise files folder on
| | 00:39 | the Desktop. The exercise files folder
contains two items. The first is a text
| | 00:44 | file about how to use the exercise
files, and the next thing is a disk image
| | 00:48 | called exercise_files.
| | 00:50 | We are using a disk image because
when I created the Color projects on my
| | 00:53 | computer, they linked up to the media
and everything that operated normally.
| | 00:57 | If I were to send you these projects and
you open them up on your computer, all
| | 01:01 | the media would be off-line because
Color uses absolute file paths and would
| | 01:05 | still be looking for the media on My
Computer. By using a disk image and
| | 01:10 | keeping all the files in the disk image,
things should operate normally. If you
| | 01:13 | want to know more about the disk image,
just check out the text file How To
| | 01:16 | Use the Exercise Files.
| | 01:18 | So I am going to go ahead and
double-click on the disk image,
| | 01:21 | exercise_files.dmg. Double-click on
that and give it a second to open up. And
| | 01:26 | here on my Desktop, there is the disk
image file, exercise_files. Notice it's
| | 01:30 | different than the actual folder icon.
So I am going to double-click on that to
| | 01:33 | open that up. And inside the disk image
file, here are all my project files.
| | 01:39 | I am just going to go to List view here
so it's a little easier to look at. And
| | 01:42 | here I have all my Color projects.
I have a folder called Final Cut Pro Master
| | 01:46 | Project, and inside of that folder
there is a Final Cut Pro Project called
| | 01:50 | Getting Started With Color. I am just
going to double-click on that to open it up.
| | 01:54 | So now, we are inside the Final Cut
Pro and you will notice that I have a
| | 01:58 | sequence opened called 04_fcptoColor.
Now, let me tell you a little bit about
| | 02:03 | the sequence before we do something
with it. This sequence is a DVCPRO HD
| | 02:07 | 720p24 sequence and it is a snippet
of a music video for band that I am in.
| | 02:13 | This sequence has some elements that
I want to pay attention to. First at the
| | 02:17 | beginning of the sequence, we have some
text. This is just your standard music
| | 02:20 | video text but this is a Title 3D,
just a text generator from Final Cut Pro.
| | 02:26 | Little further down the sequence, I
have another generator. This is also a
| | 02:31 | text, it has some lyrics from the song
but this generator is not from Final Cut Pro;
| | 02:35 | this is actually a Motion project file.
| | 02:39 | Later down on the sequence, I have a
Ken Burns-y effect or a Pan and Scan on a
| | 02:44 | photo. And then in the middle of the
sequence, I have a clip that has been
| | 02:49 | speed adjusted. I can tell that it has
been speed adjusted because on the clip
| | 02:52 | next to its name, it says a 147%. That
indicates that it has been speed adjusted.
| | 02:56 | Now there is a couple of other things
that are not so obvious to us right now,
| | 03:00 | and I want to show you what those
things are. The things that are not so
| | 03:03 | obvious is that we have some filters
or effects on a couple of these clips as
| | 03:07 | well. And an easy way to tell that,
instead of double clicking and loading each
| | 03:10 | one into the Viewer to look at it is
to come down to the bottom left hand
| | 03:14 | corner of the Final Cut Pro Timeline
and click on this little icon. It's the
| | 03:18 | one that looks like two parallel bars.
And this toggles my clip keyframes. And
| | 03:23 | when I do that, I get a couple of
things showing underneath my clips.
| | 03:26 | Now, if you are not a Final Cut Pro
user, don't worry about this. This is
| | 03:28 | pretty straightforward stuff. Basically
what the keyframes show me are keyframes
| | 03:32 | that might belong to any clip. but it
also shows me whether the clip has a
| | 03:36 | video effect and/or a motion effect on
it. The green line represents a video
| | 03:40 | effect while the blue line represents
a motion effect. If I look at this clip
| | 03:45 | right here and I double-click on it to
load it in my Viewer, you can tell that
| | 03:48 | it does have an effect on it. It has
a Color Corrector 3-way. And that's
| | 03:52 | indicated also down here on
the Timeline by the green bar.
| | 03:55 | And there is a couple of other clips in
the Timeline that have effects on them.
| | 03:57 | You can see this one right down here
has a green line on it as well. See what
| | 04:00 | that effect was. Oh! that's a Color
Balance control. So another video effect.
| | 04:06 | Now, the blue line here on the photo is
obviously that Pan and Scan. Now, why
| | 04:11 | am I telling you all this kind of stuff?
Well, the reason I am mentioning all
| | 04:14 | this stuff is because we need to know
how the stuff impacts our sequence in
| | 04:18 | Color. Now before we fix anything or
prepare anything, let's just go ahead
| | 04:22 | and send this sequence as it
is directly to Color right now.
| | 04:27 | So the way I am going to do that is I
am going to make sure my Timeline is
| | 04:30 | active and I am going to come up to
the File menu and down to Send To and
| | 04:34 | choose Color. Before I do that,
one thing I want you to know is that
| | 04:37 | only sequences can go to Color.
Individual clips cannot go to Color. So if you
| | 04:41 | want to correct an individual clip,
you got to put it on it's own sequence.
| | 04:45 | Okay, so again, I am going to come
up to the File menu, down to Send To and
| | 04:50 | choose Color. And when I choose that, a
little dialog box pops up and says, oh,
| | 04:54 | okay, what do you want to name this
Color project? And by default, it takes the
| | 04:57 | name of your Final Cut Pro sequence and
you get some information about it, like
| | 05:01 | how long it is and stuff like that.
| | 05:02 | I am going to take the default name,
04fcptoColor and just simply click OK. And
| | 05:06 | Color is going to launch. When I send
that file, what's really happening there?
| | 05:13 | Final Cut Pro is simply sending an XML
file to Color. It's not making any new
| | 05:17 | media. XML is just all the
instructions about the clips.
| | 05:21 | Okay, so now here we are in Color and
I want to take a look at a couple of
| | 05:25 | things. Now, this interface is brand
new to you, so don't get scared. But what
| | 05:28 | I am going to do is look at the Color
Timeline. The Color Timeline is down here
| | 05:32 | in the middle part of the window where
my mouse is, and what I want to do is
| | 05:35 | zoom in to this Color Timeline just to
look at it a little closer. And an easy
| | 05:38 | way to zoom is just to come to the
Timeline ruler here, the part which has all
| | 05:42 | the hash marks, and right-click and
just drag left or right. And this lets me
| | 05:47 | zoom In and Out on the Timeline. You
can also do this by Ctrl+Clicking and
| | 05:52 | dragging.
| | 05:53 | Now Color works best when you have a
three-button mouse. So a left, a right,
| | 05:56 | and a middle mouse button and I would
suggest that, if you are going to do any
| | 06:00 | serious work with Color. So let me
zoom in here and you will notice as I zoom
| | 06:03 | in, part of my clips get hidden over
here on the right side of the Timeline.
| | 06:07 | Well, if I middle click on the
Timeline ruler there and drag left to right, I
| | 06:11 | can pan my Timeline. So right click
and dragging left to right to zoom in and
| | 06:15 | out, middle click to pan the Timeline.
| | 06:18 | Okay, so now that we have zoomed in a
little bit, I want you to notice a couple
| | 06:21 | of things. First and foremost, you
will see I have several clips here on the
| | 06:25 | Video Track 2 that have, well, red
boxes in them. And if these look like off-line
| | 06:30 | clips on Final Cut Pro, that's exactly
what they are. These are off-line clips.
| | 06:34 | If you remember correctly, this first
little bit I had here was just text. It
| | 06:38 | was that video text, the name of
the song, the artist, and so forth.
| | 06:41 | A little further down in the Timeline
if you remember, I had that other text
| | 06:44 | that have the lyrics from the song. And
this also shows up as an off-line clip.
| | 06:49 | Why are both these things showing up as
off-line clips? Well, because they are
| | 06:52 | both generators. Generators from
Final Cut Pro, text generators and other
| | 06:56 | generators in Final Cut Pro, LiveType
clips, Motion clips, and so on are not
| | 07:01 | supported in Color. They will be here
as off-line clips, as placeholders, but
| | 07:05 | they do not appear in Color and you
can't see them. But once you get back to
| | 07:09 | Final Cut Pro, they will show up again.
| | 07:11 | A couple of other things. You will
notice here in the middle of the Timeline, I
| | 07:15 | have my speed adjusted clip. The speed
adjusted clip looks just fine but some
| | 07:19 | users out there are reporting problems
with speed adjusted clips. Now, I should
| | 07:23 | mention that speed adjusted clips are
supported but if you are having problems,
| | 07:27 | you might want to fix that. And we will
do that in just a minute back in Final Cut Pro.
| | 07:31 | The other thing I want you to notice at
the end of the Timeline, where we have
| | 07:33 | that JPEG. If I scroll over it, you
can see that, well, I am seeing nothing.
| | 07:38 | That's because JPEG stills or any
other stills image file format is not
| | 07:42 | supported by Color. That it will show
up as a placeholder just like this but I
| | 07:46 | will actually not be able to see the file.
| | 07:49 | The next thing I want you to notice
is remember that we had that Color
| | 07:52 | Correction filter on this clip. Now,
it's not important that you remember what
| | 07:55 | the Color Correction look like. But I
can just tell you that it's not what this
| | 07:58 | look like. Okay? Well, two things are
happening here. One, the Color Correction
| | 08:02 | filter actually did come into Color. Why?
Because it's a Color Corrector 3-way.
| | 08:06 | And Color Corrector 3-ways are
translated as corrections in what Color calls
| | 08:11 | the Primary In room. But the other
correction that I had on that really blue
| | 08:15 | clip, right here, the Color Balance
filter did not come through. And we will go
| | 08:20 | take a look at that back in
Final Cut Pro in just a minute.
| | 08:23 | So filters for the most part do not
come through into Color with the lone
| | 08:27 | exception of the Color Corrector 3-way.
And then the last thing I want you to
| | 08:31 | notice about this Timeline is that even
though I had dissolves in my Final Cut
| | 08:35 | Pro Timeline and even though they show
up here on Color, as I drag through I
| | 08:39 | don't actually get to see that dissolve.
Color will recognize transitions, keep
| | 08:44 | them as placeholders, but will
neither show you them or render those
| | 08:48 | transitions. That happens back in Final
Cut Pro. So you can see there is quite
| | 08:52 | a few problems going on with this
sequence. So what we want to do next is go
| | 08:56 | back to Final Cut Pro and just take
some steps to help prepare the sequence for
| | 08:59 | better use in Color.
| | 09:00 | I am going to hide Color by hitting
Apple+H to hide the interface. And
| | 09:06 | back in Final Cut Pro now, I just want
to clean up my Timeline. So I am just
| | 09:09 | going to hide the Clip Keyframes
button right here. So it's just a little
| | 09:13 | easier to look at. Let's address
these problems one by one, but before I do
| | 09:16 | that, what I want to do is just make a
backup of the sequence. By making the
| | 09:20 | backup of the sequence, I ensure that
if I do any real damage, I at least have
| | 09:24 | the original.
| | 09:25 | So I want to come up to my browser,
find the sequence, here it is,
| | 09:27 | 04fcptoColor, right-click on it and
duplicate it. And let's give it a new name.
| | 09:33 | We will keep the 04ftptoColor part,
but let's just say, FOR COLOR. That way we
| | 09:39 | know exactly what it is. And I am just
going to double-click on it to open it up.
| | 09:42 | Now at this point, you have a
decision to make. You can live with the
| | 09:47 | unsupported features in Color, things
like the generators, things like effects,
| | 09:51 | and that kind of stuff. But the other
real important thing to notice here is
| | 09:55 | that when a project comes back from
Color to Final Cut Pro, you might have a
| | 09:59 | problem. What do I mean by that?
| | 10:02 | Well, take for example, this clip here
that had the Color Balance filter on it.
| | 10:06 | So you send this to Color and obviously,
Color does not support these filters.
| | 10:11 | You color correct and grade the piece
of footage, it comes back to Final Cut
| | 10:15 | Pro and when it comes back to Final
Cut Pro, any unsupported features like
| | 10:20 | filters will be reapplied to the clip.
So we can potentially have a big problem
| | 10:24 | here. You color correct and grade the
clip in Color, it looks wonderful.
| | 10:29 | You send it back to Final Cut Pro, it
gets married back to this Color Balance
| | 10:32 | filter, and all of a sudden, the
clip looks like-- Well, you know what.
| | 10:36 | What we are going to do first and
foremost is remove filters from clips in
| | 10:40 | Final Cut Pro before we send it to
Color. Specifically, ones that have to do
| | 10:44 | with color issues, like this Color
Balance filter. So I am going to load that
| | 10:47 | clip and delete the Color Balance
filter, and you can see it returns to its
| | 10:50 | original. Let's go back to that other
clip that I know has a filter on it.
| | 10:54 | That Color Corrector 3-way and let's
delete that. Get back to original. And
| | 10:59 | remember, an easy way to see if I have
any filters on clips is just by clicking
| | 11:02 | my Clip Keyframes. And I don't have
any more filters on clips so I am good in
| | 11:06 | that regard.
| | 11:07 | The next issue to address is what I
want to do with these generators. As we
| | 11:10 | saw just a minute ago, the generators
should show up as placeholders. Now, you
| | 11:15 | might want that or you might not want
that. I particularly find that really
| | 11:18 | distracting to have these big red boxes
everywhere in Color indicating off-line
| | 11:21 | clips. Because I have made a backup of
the sequence, I am just going to remove
| | 11:26 | both of these generators, the Built-
in Text Generator as well as the Motion
| | 11:29 | Clip here. And then when I come back to
Final Cut Pro, I will reapply these on
| | 11:34 | the graded Timeline. So I am simply
going to select both these guys and hit
| | 11:38 | Delete to remove them.
| | 11:40 | Okay, so the next thing I need to
address is this photo at the end of the
| | 11:43 | sequence. Remember, this photo did not
show up in Color. Well, it showed up in
| | 11:47 | the Timeline but we didn't actually
see it in the Viewer in Color. So to
| | 11:51 | actually get it to Color, what I
need to do is render it out as a
| | 11:54 | self-contained QuickTime. Remember,
still images like TIFFs, JPEGs or even
| | 11:58 | still frames that you make inside of
Final Cut Pro are not supported by Color.
| | 12:02 | So to make a self-contained QuickTime,
what I am going to do is come to the
| | 12:05 | beginning of the clip and mark an
in-point. And it's useful when you are
| | 12:09 | drag, by the way, to have
snapping on. It just helps you snap at the
| | 12:13 | beginning of the clip. So if I have to
mark an in-point, I am going to come to
| | 12:15 | the end of the clip, back up one
frame and mark an out point. And then I am
| | 12:20 | going to come up to the File menu,
choose File > Export and QuickTime Movie.
| | 12:25 | I am going to give the file a name.
Let's just call it the same thing as the
| | 12:29 | photo, so sunsetphoto. Let's call it
sunsetphotomovie to differentiate it.
| | 12:37 | I am going to save it out to my desktop.
And then I make sure I use Current
| | 12:41 | Settings. This just ensures that when
the file comes back in the Final Cut Pro,
| | 12:44 | it's going to have the same codec
settings as my current Timeline.
| | 12:48 | Under the Include pulldown, I don't
need audio with this. It's just a still.
| | 12:51 | So I am just going to make sure it's
Video Only. And then I am going to make
| | 12:55 | sure it says Make Movie Self-Contained.
By choosing Make Movie Self-Contained,
| | 12:59 | what I am doing is saying, hey, make
this a self-contained movie so I can bring
| | 13:03 | it to other systems if need to be. So
I will just hit Save. It takes a second
| | 13:08 | to render out. And then back up in my
browser. Let's go ahead and right click
| | 13:11 | in the browser and choose Import and
Files. And then let's just choose the
| | 13:16 | sunsetphotomovie. That's the file I
have just exported. And choose that. There
| | 13:21 | it is in my browser. I am just going to
double-click on it to load it into the
| | 13:24 | Viewer. And you can see here it is as
I drag through it, it's that same mov
| | 13:27 | that was on it before but this time
it's just a movie instead of a still frame.
| | 13:30 | And because I already have my In and
Out points on my Timeline, all I need to
| | 13:34 | do is edit this back in. So I will take
this and drag it in and do an Overwrite
| | 13:39 | edit. And there it is. Now I have
that same move on that photo but this time
| | 13:45 | it's just a movie.
| | 13:47 | So I have done almost everything I need
to do to prepare the sequence. The one
| | 13:51 | thing that you might want to do, I am
not going to do but you can experiment
| | 13:53 | with, is the speed change. Speed
changes are supported in Color but if you are
| | 13:57 | having problems with speed change,
you would follow the exact same steps that
| | 14:01 | we just did with the photo to
render out a self-contained QuickTime.
| | 14:04 | And the very last thing I am going to
do is just because I don't want to deal
| | 14:07 | with the second video track, an empty
second video track in Color, is I am just
| | 14:10 | going to right click on the second
video track here and say Delete Track.
| | 14:16 | That way I am dealing with just a single
track. As a general rule of thumb, you want
| | 14:19 | to try to get as much footage as you
can onto a single track. It's just easier
| | 14:23 | to look at in Color.
| | 14:24 | And for the last step, now that we have
a prepared sequence, I am going to come
| | 14:28 | up to the File menu, down to Send To
and choose Color once again. Now this time
| | 14:36 | it takes a new name because it is the
sequence that I have made before Color
| | 14:39 | sequence. I am going to click OK. And
that previous file that was open in Color
| | 14:44 | is now closed and the new one is
opened up. And now if I look at the sequence
| | 14:49 | in Color, I can see, if I zoom in here
by right clicking on the Timeline bar
| | 14:53 | and dragging left and right and then
middle clicking to Pan, I can see now
| | 14:57 | that I have a single
track with no off-line clips.
| | 15:01 | As I drag through here, I have no
problems with this clip. It's the original
| | 15:05 | clip. The speed change still looks fine.
My clip that I had the Motion file on
| | 15:11 | and also had that filter on is back
to the original clip. And then lastly my
| | 15:15 | photo here now shows up in Color because
I rendered it out as a self-contained QuickTime.
| | 15:21 | Okay, so that's a little bit about
preparing our sequence for Color. Depending
| | 15:25 | on your project, you might have more
levels of complexity to preparing the
| | 15:28 | sequence but the idea is basically
the same. Always make a backup of your
| | 15:32 | sequence before preparing it for Color.
Make your preparations and then send
| | 15:35 | the file to Color.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding how Color thinks| 00:00 | So, maybe you have had the experience
of correcting footage in Final Cut Pro or
| | 00:04 | another app. The thing is you are used
to how those apps think. Not that that
| | 00:08 | thinking is wrong, it's just different
in Color. In this lesson, we will learn
| | 00:12 | how Color thinks, that is, we will
learn what the internal workflow is within
| | 00:15 | Color and the names of things.
| | 00:17 | Now this might seem scary, especially
since we are not following slides, but
| | 00:21 | trust me, you can do this. Color was
designed by artists who are really geeks
| | 00:25 | at heart. Therefore the approach it
takes for correcting a show is logical and
| | 00:29 | we are going to decode this logic.
| | 00:31 | What you need to know right off the
bat though is that every tab in the Color
| | 00:34 | workflow interface is known as a room,
and in this lesson, it's the rooms we
| | 00:39 | want to define. We are going to define
a couple of other things but that's the
| | 00:41 | main point. We are not going to define
every function of course in these rooms,
| | 00:45 | we will save that up later, but we want
to know essentially what these rooms do.
| | 00:49 | Now before I actually jump into any of
the rooms, I want to talk about the two
| | 00:53 | main windows in Color. I do have two
windows here, one on the right and one on
| | 00:58 | the left. The window on the right is
called my Composer window and it contains
| | 01:02 | all of the rooms, Setup, Primary,
Secondaries, etcetera. The window on the left
| | 01:08 | is called my Viewer and the Viewer
contains -- well, my Viewer. It's where I can
| | 01:12 | actually see my image. As well as
the scopes that I have available.
| | 01:16 | Now right now, I am running Color in
a Single Display mode. The Color was
| | 01:20 | actually built from the ground-up to
run in Dual Display mode, and we can get
| | 01:24 | to that option as well, the Composer
and the Viewer options, up in the Window
| | 01:27 | menu. The thing is when I run Dual
Display mode I actually have to restart the
| | 01:32 | application to get Dual Display to
come up. For our purpose is because I am
| | 01:36 | obviously running off a single display,
I am going to remain in Single Display mode.
| | 01:42 | The other place of the Color interface
that's not really a room is the Color
| | 01:46 | Timeline and the Color Timeline is a
pretty basic timeline but a couple of
| | 01:50 | things I want you to know. First and
foremost, we cay play clips in the Color
| | 01:54 | Timeline by simply hitting the Spacebar
and that plays the clip. Spacebar again
| | 02:00 | to stop. JKL commands work how
you are accustomed do in Final Cut Pro
| | 02:05 | but with a couple of caveats; they don't
play backwards and they don't fast forward.
| | 02:09 | A couple of other things about the
Timeline that are interesting is that you
| | 02:12 | might find it frustrating to be able
to zoom in to the Timeline; there is no
| | 02:16 | zoom tool like you find in Final Cut
Pro. To zoom in to the Color Timeline,
| | 02:19 | what I need to do is right-click or Ctrl
-click anywhere up here on the timecode
| | 02:24 | ruler. So I am going to right-click and
drag left to right to be able to zoom in
| | 02:29 | and out of my Timeline. If I hold the
middle-mouse button down and drag left
| | 02:36 | and right, I can pan my Timeline.
| | 02:38 | And there is one more important thing
about the Color Timeline. You might be
| | 02:42 | frustrated as you start playing back a
clip that it only plays back a single
| | 02:46 | clip. It keeps this endless loop,
replaying and replaying that single clip.
| | 02:51 | That's because by default Color is
setup to play a single clip. And we can
| | 02:54 | toggle this on and off.
| | 02:56 | If I come up to the Timeline menu and
come down to Toggle Playback Mode, which
| | 03:01 | keyboard shortcut coincidentally is
Shift+Command+M. You notice when I do
| | 03:06 | that I no longer have in and out
points around the clip. Those in and out
| | 03:10 | points are now around the entire
Timeline. So now when I playback, it goes from
| | 03:16 | shot to shot.
| | 03:17 | Okay. So now let's actually talk about
the rooms in the Color interface. The
| | 03:22 | first room that I have is the Setup
room. The Setup room is where I can see a
| | 03:27 | list of all my shots in the project.
It's where I can manage grades. Grades are
| | 03:31 | primary and secondary corrections
as well as color effect corrections,
| | 03:34 | essentially all the rooms saved into
one bundle that I can then apply to clips later on.
| | 03:39 | It's where I can change project
settings, specifically things like broadcast
| | 03:43 | safe. I can see messages that Color
might give me. For example, you can see a
| | 03:47 | couple of messages here about the
playback frame rate that I was getting the
| | 03:49 | last time I played. And then user preferences.
| | 03:54 | The first real room that we have in
Color where we were actually doing any work
| | 03:57 | on corrections is the Primary In room.
The Primary In room is the place where
| | 04:02 | we are going to be applying primary
color corrections, and there are quite a
| | 04:05 | few tools in here. At the top, we
have our Color Balance controls. In the
| | 04:09 | middle of the room I have my Primary
Curves, and that over on the right hand
| | 04:13 | side I have a couple of tabs, the Basic
tab and the Advanced tab which are just
| | 04:17 | other places where I have parameters
that I can affect primary corrections.
| | 04:22 | The next room over in a logical
approach is the Secondaries room. It makes
| | 04:26 | sense if you think about it. You have
applied a primary correction that affects
| | 04:29 | the entire picture and now you want to
apply a secondary correction that is a
| | 04:33 | correction that only affects a part of
the picture. The commands that we have
| | 04:37 | or the tools that we have in the
Secondaries room are similar to the Primary
| | 04:40 | room but there are quite a few differences.
| | 04:42 | At the very top of the room, I have
Color Balance controls just like I had in
| | 04:45 | the Primary In room. Down here in the
middle of the room, I have a Previews
| | 04:49 | tab, which lets me see a preview of
from doing in a Vignette or what's called
| | 04:52 | as an HSL Curve. I have Secondary
Curves, which operate very differently than
| | 04:58 | the Primary Curves, but they are another
way of providing a secondary color correction.
| | 05:02 | Below those tabs I actually have my
Vignette controls which I mentioned just a
| | 05:06 | second ago which are one way to apply
a secondary correction. Up in the upper
| | 05:10 | right hand corner, I have another way
or the third way of applying a secondary
| | 05:14 | color correction, which is what's
called an HSL key and HSL stands for Hue,
| | 05:18 | Saturation and Lightness. So in the
Secondaries room there are really three
| | 05:21 | ways to apply a secondary correction,
Vignettes, Secondary Curves and the HSL key.
| | 05:30 | So we have done Primary In, Secondaries,
the next room is the sexy room. The
| | 05:35 | next room that we have here is called
the Color FX room. And a good way to
| | 05:38 | think about the Color FX room is that
this is where looks are applied. Now the
| | 05:42 | Color FX room is probably like
nothing you have experienced before.
| | 05:45 | The way that the Color FX room works
is that it uses what it calls nodes. And
| | 05:48 | think about nodes as little self-
contained FX packages. We add them together or
| | 05:52 | we link them together to perform an
overall look or to provide an overall look.
| | 05:57 | Over on the here on the left hand side,
I have my individual nodes. Over here
| | 06:01 | in the middle is where I actually start
linking the nodes together and then on
| | 06:04 | the right I have two tabs: a
Parameters tab where I play with the different
| | 06:08 | functions of each node,
and then the Color FX Bin.
| | 06:11 | The Color FX Bin is where I can save
corrections or save Color FX that I like,
| | 06:16 | but you will also notice that there are
some color effects that were pre-built
| | 06:19 | by Apple that ship along with the
application. To apply one of these presets, I
| | 06:23 | will do one real quick, all I have to
do is double-click on its icon here, and
| | 06:29 | that color effect has been applied to
the clip, and you will see these little
| | 06:33 | tiles here. Each one of these are nodes
and they are linked together with what
| | 06:37 | I call noodles to apply the whole
overall effect. The particular one that I
| | 06:41 | just applied was the Bleach_Bypass_
Look to approximate the film process of
| | 06:45 | bleach bypassing.
| | 06:48 | So we got Primary In, Secondaries,
Color FX,. The next tab down is the Primary
| | 06:53 | Out room. Now you win a prize if you say,
"I don't get it. This looks just like
| | 06:58 | the Primary In room." Well, in fact it
is just like the Primary In room. Well,
| | 07:02 | there is a couple additional
controls over here. But all intents and
| | 07:05 | purposes, it is the same thing as the
Primary In room. Why do we have it then?
| | 07:09 | Well, the Primary Out room takes the
sum of the corrections from the Primary
| | 07:12 | In, Secondaries and Color FX room.
It's your opportunity to provide any last
| | 07:18 | minute tweaks to the clip.
| | 07:20 | The next room down in the Color
pipeline is the Geometry room. In the Geometry
| | 07:25 | room, I can apply Pan and Scan
effects like this or I can scan around the
| | 07:30 | image. With the Shapes tab down in the
bottom right hand corner of the Geometry
| | 07:35 | room, I can create user-defined shapes
that I then can attach to Secondaries,
| | 07:40 | and then lastly, I have the Tracking tab.
The Tracking tab allows me to apply a
| | 07:45 | single point tracker for the purposes
of having a correction follow that track.
| | 07:50 | The next room in the Color pipeline is
the Stills Store room and the purpose of
| | 07:53 | the Stills Store room is to save a
still frame that is representative of a
| | 07:58 | correction or clip that you like for
comparison against another piece of
| | 08:02 | footage in your sequence. the way that
this works is whatever clip my playhead
| | 08:07 | is on, when I click the Save button
here at the bottom of the Stills Store
| | 08:10 | room, it saves a representative
thumbnail of that clip. Then what I need to do,
| | 08:16 | if I want to use it for comparison,
I am going to go to another clip in the
| | 08:20 | Timeline, say this one. Double-click
on the clip to load it up and make sure
| | 08:26 | that this checkbox, Display Loaded
Still, is enabled and then over here in my
| | 08:31 | Viewer, I can see those two images side
by side. This is a great tool when you
| | 08:35 | are trying to do scene-to-scene color
correction and match up various clips.
| | 08:40 | The last room that I have is the
Render Queue. The Render Queue is where I
| | 08:44 | actually render files out to go back
to Final Cut Pro. Getting files back to
| | 08:48 | Final Cut Pro is actually a two-step
process. I need to do first create new
| | 08:51 | QuickTime files. That's what the
Render Queue does. The second part of this
| | 08:54 | process is I actually send an XML file
to Final Cut Pro so it knows where these
| | 08:59 | clips are. To add clips to the Render
Queue I can simply choose one of the
| | 09:02 | functions down here, Add Selected or
Add All clips, and when I do that, these
| | 09:06 | clips are now ready to render
and go back to Final Cut Pro.
| | 09:10 | So now that we know a bit more about
how Color thinks, the next step is to dive
| | 09:15 | in and start making corrections. First
we will make some primary corrections,
| | 09:19 | corrections that affect the entire
picture, and then we will make some
| | 09:22 | secondary corrections, corrections
that affect only a part of the picture.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making primary corrections| 00:00 | All right, welcome to Color. We are
now ready to do with this program is all
| | 00:05 | about, correcting and grading clips. In
this lesson, we will take a look at the
| | 00:09 | Primary In room. First, we will take a
look at the controls inside the Primary
| | 00:13 | In room and then we will start
correcting a few clips. Let's get started.
| | 00:16 | The project that I have here has four
clips in it. If I look down at the Color
| | 00:19 | timeline, let's take a quick spin
through those clips. The first clip that I
| | 00:23 | have is a shot of a bench here on a
rainy day and it's kind of dark. And I can
| | 00:26 | see that up here in my Viewer. The
next clip that I have up here in my Viewer
| | 00:30 | is a clip that looks pretty over
exposed, pretty bright, not a whole lot of
| | 00:35 | detail going on over here and
definitely needs a lot of help. The third clip
| | 00:39 | that I have is a clip that's neither
over exposed or under exposed; it just
| | 00:43 | kind of lacks any definition. And
then the fourth clip that I have is a clip
| | 00:47 | that is well, blue. So let's get
started correcting these clips.
| | 00:52 | To correct these clips, I am going to
go to the Primary In room, which is just
| | 00:55 | the second tab at top of the Color
interface. And for the purposes of this
| | 00:59 | lesson, we are going to use the Color
Balance controls to correct these clips.
| | 01:02 | What are the Color Balance controls?
Well, the Color Balance controls are these
| | 01:05 | guys right at the top of the room and
they are separated into three different
| | 01:09 | tonal ranges: Shadows, Midtones and Highlights.
| | 01:13 | In each one of the Color Balance
controls, we have a number of parameters or
| | 01:17 | things that we can adjust. The first
little strip here, a little bar I have, is
| | 01:21 | my Hue bar. And this is where I can
adjust the Hue of the actual correction.
| | 01:26 | The middle bar is my Saturation bar.
As I move that around I can adjust the
| | 01:30 | saturation of a particular Hue that
I have got chosen. Now what's kind of
| | 01:34 | interesting to note about this, as
I start moving the Saturation slider up
| | 01:37 | and down, you can see over here in the
color wheel, this target also starts to
| | 01:41 | move. And then the third bar is my
Contrast slider. This is where I can affect
| | 01:45 | the overall contrast of
the particular tonal range.
| | 01:49 | Now of course, I can come in and just
drag around the target here and that
| | 01:52 | adjusts the Hue and Saturation sliders
all at once. So I don't have to come in
| | 01:56 | and manually adjust each one. At the
bottom of each Color Balance control,
| | 02:00 | you will notice a little blue dot here
and that's the button to reset that
| | 02:04 | particular tonal range. So I
will just click to Reset there.
| | 02:08 | So the first thing that we have to do
here is we have to adjust the contrast of
| | 02:12 | this clip because it's pretty dark. And
therefore, I want to be using just the
| | 02:15 | Contrast sliders. As I mentioned before,
Contrast adjustments are adjustments
| | 02:19 | that we want to do before we do any
color adjustments. So how do I know that
| | 02:24 | this clip is dark? Well, obviously I am
looking at it and it looks pretty dark.
| | 02:28 | But the other way that I have to tell
that it's dark is my Waveform scope. Over
| | 02:33 | here underneath of the Viewer, I have
my Waveform scope. Now if your Waveform
| | 02:37 | scope is not on, it should be by
default, you can always right-click anywhere
| | 02:40 | in this area and just choose Waveform.
I want to make sure that my Waveform is
| | 02:45 | set to the Luma scope; this just let's
me view the Luma portion of my signal.
| | 02:50 | Now the way that this scope works is
that I have all this sort of squiggly
| | 02:53 | stuff that actually represents my picture.
This is called the Trace. This trace
| | 02:58 | is mapped out on a scale from 0 to
100. 0 representing black while 100
| | 03:04 | representing white. And going from left
to right, it represents the image going
| | 03:09 | left to right. So if I look at this
Waveform, I can tell that I have a whole
| | 03:13 | lot of image that's pretty dark
because it's pretty low on the scale. So the
| | 03:16 | idea when we correct this particular
clip is that we want to have this Waveform
| | 03:21 | be spread out a little bit more on the
Waveform monitor. So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 03:26 | The first thing that I am going to do
is I am going to come in to the Contrast
| | 03:28 | slider for the Shadow tonal range. And
I am going to drag it down just a little
| | 03:32 | bit. And you are asking me why am I
dragging something down when the clip is
| | 03:36 | already dark? Well, I want to have the
bottom of the Waveform just touch 0% to
| | 03:41 | give the blacks-- well, make them black.
| | 03:44 | The next thing I want to do is come to
the Highlights Contrast slider and drag up.
| | 03:48 | And as I do that you will notice
that the image starts to get brighter.
| | 03:52 | Now, I keep dragging up a little bit
and I don't want to overdo it because I
| | 03:55 | can quickly wash out this clip. So I
will stop somewhere right around here. And
| | 04:00 | next I am going to use the Midtones
Contrast slider to sort of give an over-
| | 04:04 | arching feel to this clip. So what I
am going to do is drag the Midtones up
| | 04:09 | just ever so slightly. Now you will
notice as I did those three Contrast
| | 04:13 | adjustments, the clip sort of became
washed out. And in fact, if I look on the
| | 04:17 | Waveform monitor, it's no longer
touching 0 and I have moved the whole
| | 04:21 | Waveform. This is common when you are
doing Contrast adjustments in Color that
| | 04:25 | as you affect one tonal range, you
will have to go back and affect another
| | 04:28 | tonal range. That's because the
tonal ranges overlap considerably.
| | 04:32 | So let me go back to the Shadow
Contrast slider and just drag down so I get 0
| | 04:35 | touching there again. And there we
go. We have brightened up this clip
| | 04:39 | considerably. Now I don't need to make
sure any part of the Waveform touches
| | 04:42 | 100 because after all this is on a
rainy day. I just wanted to brighten the
| | 04:45 | clip up a little bit. A good
keyboard shortcut to know is Ctrl+G. Ctrl+G
| | 04:49 | toggles on and off a grade. So as I
hit Ctrl+G, here is the original, here is
| | 04:55 | the corrected version. The original,
the corrected version. And you can see the
| | 04:58 | corrected version is a great deal brighter.
| | 05:00 | So the next clip that I have in my
timeline is this clip of person walking
| | 05:04 | down what looks like to be a riverside.
And it looks to be pretty bright but
| | 05:09 | let's go back to my Waveform monitor
and see if in fact it is bright. Well,
| | 05:12 | look at the Waveform monitor, you
can see that I have quite a bit of the
| | 05:15 | Waveform sort of trapped right
here at a 100%. Well, this is a little
| | 05:19 | misleading because by default, the
Broadcast Safe feature of Color is on.
| | 05:24 | And then where I have that control for
Broadcast Safe is in the Setup room. And
| | 05:29 | then down under Project Settings.
Anytime I send a project from Final Cut Pro
| | 05:33 | to Color, Broadcast Safe is on by
default. And what Broadcast Safe does is it
| | 05:37 | attempts to limit contrast as well as
color information like saturation so it
| | 05:42 | is broadcast safe. If I check this
off and I go back and look at my Luma
| | 05:47 | Waveform monitor, you will notice that
the trace just went a whole bit higher
| | 05:51 | than a 100% indicating the true nature
of this clip. It's really over exposed.
| | 05:56 | So let me go back into my Primary In
room and we are going to just do the same
| | 05:59 | thing but just sort of inverse of the
way that we corrected an under exposed
| | 06:03 | clip. So what I am going to do first
is I come in to the Highlights Contrast
| | 06:07 | slider and just drag down until I get
the Waveform on Luma monitor just around
| | 06:13 | 100%, just like that. Then I am going
to come into the Shadows Contrast slider
| | 06:18 | and drag down so I get a little part of
the image touching right around 0. And
| | 06:23 | then because this clip is so little too,
overall a little bit too bright,
| | 06:27 | I am going to take the Midtones Contrast
slider and drag down just a bit to get a
| | 06:32 | little more definition in the clip.
Remember if I hit Ctrl+G, I can toggle the
| | 06:37 | correction on and off. So there is
the original and there is the corrected
| | 06:41 | version. And you can see especially
in areas like the jacket here, the
| | 06:44 | railing, we have a lot more
definition in the clip. Okay.
| | 06:49 | The third clip that I have is kind
of an interesting one. Well it's not
| | 06:53 | interesting, it's just well, rain
drops on a puddle. But the reason it's
| | 06:57 | interesting is because the clip is
neither overexposed nor underexposed. It's
| | 07:01 | kind of just, well, exposed. And I can
tell that by looking at the Waveform.
| | 07:05 | You can see I have nothing really
touching 0, it doesn't have a lot of
| | 07:08 | definition. I have maybe a couple of
little dots here, little pixels that are
| | 07:11 | coming up to a 100, but most of the
stuff is right in the middle. And this is a
| | 07:14 | common situation that colorists find.
They have a clip that's pretty good,
| | 07:18 | they just need to apply a little tweak
to it. That's exactly what we are going
| | 07:21 | to do with this clip.
| | 07:22 | So I want to come into my Color Balance
controls. So the first thing I want to
| | 07:26 | do is I want to come into the Shadow
Contrast control and drag down, just so I
| | 07:30 | have a part of the Waveform touching
right around the 0, just like right around
| | 07:34 | here. Then I want to come in to the
Highlights Contrast slider and drag up to
| | 07:40 | stretch that Waveform up towards 100%.
Just be careful you don't go too far.
| | 07:44 | And then what we want to do is use the
Midtones Contrast slider to go up just
| | 07:50 | ever so slightly. Now you might be
wondering, what about these extra pixels,
| | 07:54 | these little dots that are above
100%? I thought you said those were
| | 07:57 | illegal. Well, I did. But we will see
later on one of the last steps that we
| | 08:01 | do is we will turn Broadcast Safe back
on to clip any of those remaining one or
| | 08:06 | two pixels that we might have forced
illegal. So if I toggle this correction on
| | 08:10 | and off, you can see that the clip,
it doesn't really have any noticeable
| | 08:14 | contrast changes, but what you might
describe it as, it has more definition.
| | 08:18 | The original clip here kind of has a
sheen over it and the corrected clip has a
| | 08:22 | little more definition to it.
| | 08:25 | Okay, in the fourth and final clip that
we have for primary correction is, whoa.
| | 08:30 | It's a beast of a clip right here; it's
nice and blue. Now why did this happen?
| | 08:34 | Well, it happened because the DP was
not really paying attention and didn't
| | 08:39 | white balance the camera and there you
go, you have a nice blue clip. This is a
| | 08:42 | common situation that a colorist finds
himself in, often having to fix color balance
| | 08:46 | problems. But the first thing we
want to make sure that we do is always
| | 08:50 | contrast adjust first and then
change your color balance. So let's do our
| | 08:55 | Contrast adjustments first.
| | 08:57 | In the Primary In room, I am going to
come in to the Shadows Contrast slider
| | 09:00 | and drag down just a little bit, just
to get a little more definition there.
| | 09:04 | Again, the goal is to have something
touch right around the 0; it gives a
| | 09:06 | little more definition to my blacks.
Let's come in to my Highlights and just up
| | 09:12 | a smidge, it's pretty bright clip. And
then into my Midtones Contrast slider
| | 09:16 | and this is a personal taste but I am
going to go down just a little bit, just
| | 09:20 | to get a little bit more definition to
areas that are in Midtones, things like
| | 09:23 | hair, skin, stuff like that.
| | 09:26 | Now there is one more thing that I want
to change in the Color interface. It's
| | 09:29 | really going to help us correct this
clip and it has to do with our scopes
| | 09:32 | again. Back in my Setup room and back
to User Preferences, I have this option
| | 09:39 | to show Monochrome Scopes. And that's
what I am looking at right now, these
| | 09:42 | scopes are kind of this golden color.
In fact, I can make it any color I
| | 09:45 | choose here. But if I uncheck
Monochrome Scopes, you will notice that a couple
| | 09:50 | of things happen. First, my Luma
Waveform monitor turned white and that's kind of
| | 09:54 | make sense because you are adjusting
Contrast which is black and white. But if
| | 09:58 | I click on one of these other scopes
here, for example my Parade scope, you
| | 10:02 | will see that now those Waveform is
drawn in, for example the Parade, in red,
| | 10:06 | green, and blue. And the Parade scope
as well as the scope below, which is
| | 10:09 | called the Vector scope, are very
useful for analyzing and looking at color
| | 10:14 | problems in a clip.
| | 10:15 | The Parade scope shows me the relative
balance of R, G, and B: Red, Green, and v
| | 10:19 | It works just like the Waveform does.
It's mapped on a scale from 0 to
| | 10:24 | 100 and it's mapped left to right
showing me the picture. But instead of going
| | 10:28 | all the way across, the entire picture
is mapped in each color channel. So in
| | 10:32 | other words, the entire picture is
from here to here for the red channel,
| | 10:35 | here to here for green,
and from here to here for blue.
| | 10:39 | The Vector scope shows me nothing about
contrast information. It only shows me
| | 10:43 | color information. And it's mapped
out on a scale that has targets. In the
| | 10:48 | middle of the scale, I have my center
point here which is white. The distance
| | 10:52 | that I go out from the center of the
scale is my Saturation and in which angle
| | 10:57 | I go out from the center of the scale
is my Hue. I have a couple of other sort
| | 11:03 | of indicators on the Vector scope. I
have these color targets out here on the
| | 11:06 | outside, yellow, red, magenta, blue,
cyan and green. And then I have these I
| | 11:12 | and Q bars. The I and Q bars are just
used to troubleshoot the image. Well in
| | 11:15 | fact, the I bar is also called the
flesh tone line but again that's to sort
| | 11:19 | of troubleshoot the image.
| | 11:20 | As we look at the Vector scope, you
can see that most of the squiggly stuff,
| | 11:24 | that's the image, is pointed out
towards blue. The distance again from out
| | 11:29 | from center is how saturated it is.
So this is pretty heavily saturated in
| | 11:32 | blue. I can see the same thing up
here on my RGB Parade. The red and green
| | 11:38 | channels looks to be pretty balanced
but the blue channel is way above the red
| | 11:42 | and green. So all indicating that I have
a blue cast which is pretty obvious in this clip.
| | 11:47 | Okay, so now to fix it. Coming back to
the Primary In room. What I am going to
| | 11:51 | do is I am going to use the Color
Balance controls to neutralize this color
| | 11:54 | cast. And the way a color cast is
neutralized is by dragging to the opposite
| | 11:58 | side of a color wheel. So in other
words, if I have a blue color cast,
| | 12:02 | blue is right here on the color wheel,
to neutralize this color cast, I would go
| | 12:06 | towards yellow or red. And in fact,
it's exactly what I am going to do. I want to
| | 12:09 | take the Midtones Color Balance control
because that's where the face and most
| | 12:12 | of the midtones of this image are.
And drag it a little towards yellow,
| | 12:18 | something like that. And then we will
do the same thing for the Highlights.
| | 12:23 | Just ever so slightly, just to get a
little warmth back in the face. Now I don't
| | 12:27 | really need to do the Shadows here
because it's a pretty bright image. I don't
| | 12:29 | really have that much of a blue cast
in the Shadows. Now this is not perfect
| | 12:33 | but this is, for right now,
this is an okay image.
| | 12:36 | If I toggle this grade on and off by
hitting Ctrl+G, you can see the noticeable
| | 12:41 | difference between the clip. Here is
the original with a nice blue color cast
| | 12:45 | and here is the corrected image that has
some natural skin tones put back into the clip.
| | 12:49 | Okay that's been a whirlwind tour of
making primary corrections in Color. In the
| | 12:53 | Color Essentials title, we will
break down all the areas of primary color
| | 12:56 | correction and all the controls in the
Primary In room. Now that we have made
| | 13:00 | some primary corrections, up next
we will talk about making secondary corrections.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making secondary corrections| 00:00 | So sometimes, you want to make
corrections that affect only part of the image
| | 00:04 | and not affect the whole image, like a
primary correction does. Well, in the
| | 00:08 | wild world of color grading, these
types of corrections are known as secondary
| | 00:11 | corrections. One of my favorite tasks
as a colorist is to perform Secondary
| | 00:15 | Corrections. Whether that be the
mundane, like separately de-saturating a red
| | 00:19 | shirt but keeping the rest of the
picture nice and saturated. Or the fun stuff
| | 00:23 | like making a sky in a shot look
beautiful. One of the best parts of Color is
| | 00:27 | that it provides us multiple
methods for performing these secondary
| | 00:30 | corrections. And if you combine that
with the ability to have up to eight tabs
| | 00:34 | across the bottom of the Secondaries
room, you will have more creative control
| | 00:37 | than you ever thought possible. So in
this movie, I have three clips that I
| | 00:41 | want perform secondary color
corrections to. Let's take a quick look at the
| | 00:45 | clips. The first shot is a beautiful
shot of a bridge in Tokyo. No, I didn't
| | 00:50 | travel to Tokyo, although I wish I
could have. No, this shot was provided by
| | 00:54 | the good folks at artbeats.com. It's a
nice looking clip and it's already had
| | 00:58 | some primary corrections applied to it.
What we are going to do with this clip
| | 01:01 | is treat the sky so that is a very
surreal purply pink. The second clip is a
| | 01:05 | profile shot that's kind of missing
something. I think I could make it a little
| | 01:09 | more dramatic. And we are going to do
that with the secondary color correction.
| | 01:12 | What we are going to do with this clip
is change the lighting in the scene to
| | 01:16 | make it a bit more dramatic. And the
third clip that I have is also a clip from
| | 01:20 | artbeats.com. It's a busy scene on a
New York City street that has been spread
| | 01:24 | up with cars going by in fast motion.
We are also going to apply secondary
| | 01:28 | color correction to this clip that will
de-saturate most of the scene but leave
| | 01:32 | the taxi cabs yellow. So in Color,
there are three ways to perform secondary
| | 01:37 | color corrections. Of course, all three
ways happened in the Secondaries room,
| | 01:41 | which is the third tab over. And those
three ways are HSL keys, with the HSL
| | 01:47 | controls up here in the upper right
hand corner. HSL stands for Hue, Saturation
| | 01:51 | and Lightness. The second way is with
Vignettes and the Vignette controls are
| | 01:56 | right here at the bottom middle of the
room. And then the last way is with the
| | 02:00 | Secondary Curves of which I have three:
Hue, Saturation and Luma Curves. Now
| | 02:07 | different clips are going to require
different methods of secondary color
| | 02:10 | correction. But for example sake, we
are going to use all three methods to
| | 02:13 | correct the three clips in this project.
And we are going to start out with an
| | 02:16 | HSL key. The first thing I need to do
is make sure that the Enabled button at
| | 02:20 | the top of the room is checked. If I
don't have that button checked, anything
| | 02:24 | that I do in this room won't show up
in my Viewer. So to perform an HSL key,
| | 02:29 | what I am going to do is come over
here with the HSL controls and grab the
| | 02:32 | Eyedropper tool. And when I do that, I
want you to notice a couple of things.
| | 02:35 | First over in my Viewer I have this
red cross here. What this red cross here
| | 02:39 | let's me do is choose the pixels that I
want to have take place in the key. Now
| | 02:43 | one real important thing here. I don't
want to just single click. Because if I
| | 02:47 | just single, I will be only choosing
the HSL values of one individual pixel.
| | 02:52 | What I want to do is click and drag to
add multiple pixels' HSL values to the
| | 02:57 | key. So let me go ahead and do that.
Click and drag. And the second thing I
| | 03:03 | want you to notice that's happening is
down in the Previews tab in the middle
| | 03:07 | of the Secondaries room. In the
Previews tab on the left hand side, I see my
| | 03:11 | original image and then on the right
hand side I see this sort of white on
| | 03:15 | black view. This is my matte. And what
a matte is it's just white on black and
| | 03:20 | the white portions of the image are
things that I have chosen, parts of the
| | 03:23 | image that I have selected. The black
stuff is part of the image that is not
| | 03:27 | selected. Next to the matte I have
three different buttons. The button that's
| | 03:31 | on by default is this one that's
grey/green/grey. And that shows me a
| | 03:35 | desaturated preview up here in my
Viewer. You can see that the areas that I
| | 03:39 | have chosen, the stuff in white is
still saturated while the stuff in black is
| | 03:44 | desaturated up in the Viewer.
If I click on the button that's
| | 03:47 | black/white/black, I see my matte only.
And again, a matte is white on black;
| | 03:53 | white is the stuff that I have
selected that I am targeting for a Secondary
| | 03:56 | Correction; black is the stuff that
is not selected and that will not take
| | 03:59 | place in the Secondary color Correction.
Now in an ideal world, what we would
| | 04:03 | like to have happen is the white
stuff to be perfectly white and the black
| | 04:07 | stuff to be well, perfectly black. Well,
for the purposes of secondary color
| | 04:11 | correction often that this is not of
utmost importance. It's okay to have sort
| | 04:15 | of grey areas or holes in your mattes.
But in the Color Essentials title, we
| | 04:19 | will use the HSL qualifiers, over
here in the upper right hand corner, to
| | 04:23 | fine-tune this matte. For our purposes
right now, this matte is just fine. And
| | 04:28 | the third and final button that I have
in my matte preview buttons, is the one
| | 04:32 | that's red, green and blue and this
shows me my final corrected image. So now
| | 04:36 | that I have selected a portion of the
image, I have a matte, what I want to do
| | 04:40 | is come up to my Color Balance
controls here in the Secondaries room and I am
| | 04:44 | going to correct this image by adding
a little bit of color to what I have
| | 04:47 | selected. So I am going to drag my
Midtone's Color Balance control a little bit
| | 04:52 | towards sort of pinkish red. And
then I am going to do the same thing for
| | 04:58 | Highlights. And you can see as I did
that, the area that I have selected in the
| | 05:02 | sky is sort of tinted sort of this pink,
sort of an Armageddon kind of cloud.
| | 05:06 | Now a couple of things about this. Let
me reset those real quick. Because my
| | 05:12 | matte, let me click back on matte view,
because it have some of these holes in
| | 05:15 | it, if I just apply the correction by
adding that pink to it, it's going to
| | 05:19 | kind of look a little chunky. So what
I want to do is actually come over here
| | 05:23 | to the right hand side of the
Secondaries room and to this parameter called Key
| | 05:27 | Blur. What Key Blur does is it adds
blur to the white portions of the matte, it
| | 05:32 | blurs the edges so there is not hard
edges between where there's solid white
| | 05:36 | and grey and then kind of black. So
what I am going to do is add a little Key
| | 05:40 | Blur and to do this, I am just going to
use my middle mouse button to scroll up
| | 05:43 | to add some Key Blur. And if this
seems like it's taking forever, which it
| | 05:47 | does, if you hold down the Option key,
you can have these values go up much
| | 05:53 | faster. So again, to just scroll about
here, just use the middle mouse button.
| | 05:57 | To make it go faster, hold down the
Option key and you can add values. And you
| | 06:01 | can see over here now, the matte is
now blurred. So some of those hard edges
| | 06:05 | are going to be softened up. Okay, so
let's go back to the final button, the
| | 06:10 | one that's red green and blue and let's
add that tint again to the sky. And now
| | 06:18 | when I did that I have much softer
tint throughout and none of those hard
| | 06:22 | edges. Okay. So that's HSL key. The
next clip that I want to play with I
| | 06:27 | actually want to apply a Vignette
Secondary color Correction. So let's click on
| | 06:31 | the second clip, just move our played
down there. Incidentally, you can use the
| | 06:34 | Up and Down Arrows to navigate
between clips too, which is a nice way to
| | 06:38 | navigate. So the Down Arrow to go to
the next clip, Up Arrow to go to the
| | 06:41 | previous clip. So this is clip is that
okay shot of a profile here and I just
| | 06:47 | think it's lacking any sort of
character to it; doesn't really have anything
| | 06:49 | really interesting. So I am gong to
make this interesting by adding a Vignette
| | 06:53 | secondary color correction to sort of
alter the lighting of the scene. The way
| | 06:57 | I am going to do that is by adding a
Vignette but first we need to make sure
| | 07:00 | that I have the Enabled check box
checked up here. So again, Enabled checkbox
| | 07:04 | makes sure that any corrections that I
do are actually applied to the clip. I
| | 07:07 | am then going to come down to the
Vignette controls in the bottom portion of
| | 07:12 | the room here and make sure that
Vignette is turned on. And when I do that,
| | 07:16 | automatically in my Previews tab here
you will see these controls; these are my
| | 07:19 | Vignette controls. Now there are two
ways of manipulating the controls here. I
| | 07:23 | can manipulate them directly in the
Previews tab by moving the Vignette around.
| | 07:28 | I can come to the edges of the
Vignette and change the size of it. If I
| | 07:32 | right-click and drag on one of the
corners, I can rotate the Vignette, okay.
| | 07:38 | And otherwise move it around however I
see fit. I can also exercise the same
| | 07:42 | amount of control by using the actual
parameters down here. And these work like
| | 07:45 | any parameter box in Color. By using
my middle mouse button, I can scroll the
| | 07:49 | value or holding Option down I can go
much faster to scroll the value. So I
| | 07:54 | have a circle and that's the Vignette
that's there by default. But under a
| | 07:58 | Shape pulldown, I also have a couple of
other options. I can create a square or
| | 08:02 | a user shape. And a user shape is just
a shape that I will draw. And we will
| | 08:05 | take a look that in the Color
Essentials title. So I have created a Vignette
| | 08:10 | around the head here. And what I am
going to do is add a little softness so the
| | 08:15 | Vignette is not so hard. But to
demonstrate what this looks like with the hard
| | 08:18 | edge, I am going to come up to the
Control pulldown here at the top of the
| | 08:22 | Secondaries room. What the Control
pulldown does, when it is set to Inside, any
| | 08:26 | correction that I do will affect what I
have selected. So in other words, in a
| | 08:30 | case of a Vignette what's inside of the
Vignette. When this is set to Outside,
| | 08:35 | any corrections that I do will affect
what's outside of the Vignette. If we
| | 08:39 | take a look at our HSL key back here,
same thing is true. Inside would be what
| | 08:44 | I have selected, the matte; Outside
would have been the black stuff the stuff,
| | 08:48 | stuff that's not selected. Okay, so
now that I have the Vignette around the
| | 08:53 | head here, I am going to come up to the
Outside, here it is. And I am going to
| | 08:57 | adjust my Color Balance controls and
adjust the Contrast slider of my Midtones
| | 09:01 | and drag down quite a bit and do the
same thing for my Highlight Contrast
| | 09:05 | slider; just so I get some nice dark
lighting around. Now obviously, I didn't
| | 09:10 | become a saint overnight here and I
have this little halo around my head,
| | 09:13 | right? This is because I don't have any
softness applied to this Vignette and I
| | 09:17 | have nice hard edges. So what I
want to do is come down to the Softness
| | 09:21 | parameter at the bottom of the
Secondaries room in the Vignette controls, and
| | 09:25 | just ramp that up quite a bit. As I
do that you can see in the onscreen
| | 09:30 | controls, I have this softness, these
two circles are showing me the softness.
| | 09:35 | And up in my Viewer you can see that
the edge is nice and soft. Now if I toggle
| | 09:40 | this correction on and off just by
hitting the Enabled button, there is the
| | 09:44 | original, there is the corrected version.
I now have sort of a spotlight effect
| | 09:48 | and that's a little bit more dramatic.
Okay, so the third and final clip that I
| | 09:53 | have, if you remember correctly, was a
clip where I wanted to de-saturate most
| | 09:57 | of the scene but leave the taxi cabs
to themselves saturated. I want to leave
| | 10:00 | the taxi cabs yellow. And the way that
I am going to do this is by using one of
| | 10:04 | the secondary curves. Specifically, the
Saturation curve. But before I actually
| | 10:08 | start manipulating the secondary curve
I want to make sure that my Secondaries
| | 10:11 | are enabled. So I am going to the top
of the Secondaries room and check the
| | 10:15 | Enabled box. The way that the
Saturation curve works is that it maps the color
| | 10:20 | spectrum left to right. So red to red,
it actually wraps around. And the way I
| | 10:24 | manipulate this curve is by adding
points on to the line itself. So if I click
| | 10:30 | on the line here, I add points. And
if I drag one of these points up, I am
| | 10:35 | going to be saturating the color that I
have chosen. And if I drag one of these
| | 10:39 | points down, I am going to be de-
saturating. So you can see here this
| | 10:42 | yellow-red that I have selected, if I
drag it up, the cabs get more saturated.
| | 10:47 | If I drag it down, those cabs get less
saturated. Okay, so let me go ahead and
| | 10:51 | reset the saturation curve by clicking
the little blue dot in the upper left
| | 10:55 | hand corner of the Saturation Curve box.
And let's go ahead and add some points
| | 10:59 | so we can do our intended effect. I am
going to go ahead and add a couple of
| | 11:03 | points in the yellow and red area of
this clip, around here, maybe add three or
| | 11:09 | four, maybe five. There we go. And
the reason I am adding a few of these is
| | 11:13 | because I want a sort of isolate this
section of the curve off from the rest of
| | 11:17 | the curve. So what I am going to do is
I am going to go in and start dragging
| | 11:22 | the rest the curve, the colors I
don't want, dragging those control points
| | 11:26 | down, effectively de-saturating the
rest of the image. And as I do that you can
| | 11:33 | see that the image does becomes
desaturated. That's pretty good but I still
| | 11:36 | have a little bit of finessing to go.
So let's go ahead and finesse this just a
| | 11:40 | bit. And remember, if I move points up
and down, I am going to be changing the
| | 11:45 | saturation; more saturated or less
saturated. But if I move left to right, I am
| | 11:49 | choosing to include a different part
of the color spectrum. So let's change
| | 11:53 | this curve so where we have most of
the taxi cabs chosen and we have most of
| | 12:01 | the reds and stuff like that not in the
image. Here we go. And let me just drag
| | 12:06 | this area right where I have the taxi
cab colors, that orangey red, just drag
| | 12:09 | it up just a bit just to saturate
those cabs just a little bit more. Now for
| | 12:15 | those of you who have an astute eye,
you may notice that not everything in the
| | 12:20 | image has been desaturated; this little
peanut guy over here, this sign are not
| | 12:25 | desaturated. It's because they show
the same colors as the taxicabs. In the
| | 12:29 | Color Essential training, we will
actually combine multiple secondaries to
| | 12:34 | limit the saturation curve so it's
only affecting just the cabs and not the
| | 12:39 | rest of the image. So as you can see
secondary curves in Color can be extremely
| | 12:44 | powerful. But one thing to keep in
mind, not every shot needs a secondary
| | 12:49 | correction. However, the power of
secondary corrections in Color will make you
| | 12:53 | try but just be warned that not every
shot needs to do it and use them wisely.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sending files back to Final Cut Pro from Color| 00:00 | So we have made primary and secondary
corrections in Color. At this point for
| | 00:04 | many Color projects, that's the end
of the pipeline. In lynda.com's Color
| | 00:07 | Essential training title, we'll explore
the rest of that pipeline that includes
| | 00:10 | using multiple Secondaries rooms,
the Primary Out room, Color FX room, and
| | 00:14 | Tracking, and Pan and
Scan, and the Geometry room.
| | 00:17 | For now, let's just say we are all
done with the corrections that we've
| | 00:19 | made. So the next step is to get our
Graded footage back to Final Cut Pro where
| | 00:23 | it can be married with audio,
transitions, effects and finally be outputted.
| | 00:27 | In this lesson, we'll explore the two
parts of that process, adding clips to
| | 00:31 | the Render Queue and using the Send To
> Final Cut Pro Command. So here I have
| | 00:34 | a sequence in Color that for all intents
and purposes is done. It has had primary
| | 00:38 | and secondary corrections applied to
the clips and now it's ready to go back to
| | 00:41 | Final Cut Pro.
| | 00:43 | And there are two parts of this process
as I mentioned. The first is we need to
| | 00:46 | render out a new set of media for
Final Cut Pro to use. And then we need to
| | 00:49 | send back instructions to Final Cut
Pro that tells Final Cut Pro where these
| | 00:53 | files live. And we do that with the XML file
via the File > Send To > Final Cut Pro command.
| | 00:58 | So we have our render footage is in
the Render Queue and logically it makes
| | 01:01 | sense that the Render Queue is the
last tab or the last room in the Color
| | 01:05 | pipeline. When I click on the Render
Queue I have a blank slate. I have no
| | 01:08 | clips that are added to the Render
Queue yet. Down here at the bottom of the
| | 01:11 | room, I have some commands. I can add
a selected clip, which will only add a
| | 01:15 | single selected clip that I have my
timeline. I can add all the clips for my
| | 01:19 | timeline. I can clear the queue, which
removes all the clips from the queue. I
| | 01:22 | can remove an individual clip by the
Remove Selected button. Then finally I can
| | 01:26 | start and stop the render
with the Start Render button.
| | 01:28 | So I want to add all the clips for my
Color timeline and I click Add All. And
| | 01:32 | when I do that, my Color Render Queue
becomes populated with some clips. And
| | 01:36 | here I can see the name of the shot,
its In and Out point. I can also see its Grade ID.
| | 01:40 | In the Color Essentials title, we'll
take a look at Grade IDs and more about
| | 01:44 | Grade management. But for right now,
all of them are going to have Grade ID
| | 01:47 | number 1. And then over here I have a
progress bar, which shows me that all my
| | 01:51 | clips are currently
queued, ready to be rendered.
| | 01:53 | Then on the timeline I have two things
that are of importance. First on each
| | 01:57 | clip, I have a little yellow bar
underneath the clip that let's me know that
| | 02:00 | they are queued. And in fact, that
yellow color matches the word queued in the
| | 02:03 | Render Queue. Above the timeline, I
have this little orange bar that shows me
| | 02:07 | that these clips have not yet been
rendered. Orange means not rendered and
| | 02:11 | we'll see as we start to
render that this part turns green.
| | 02:14 | So I am all ready to go to render but
one important thing before we do this.
| | 02:18 | Where are these clips going to be
rendered to? Well, we can actually setup a
| | 02:21 | preference about where these clips
are going to. But by default, they get
| | 02:24 | rendered to your User directory.
Specifically, your Document's folder and then
| | 02:28 | the Color Document's folder.
| | 02:29 | Before I click Render, I need to know
where these clips are going to go. We can
| | 02:33 | actually setup a user preference to
change where these clips are going to go
| | 02:36 | but by default, these clips go to your
User folder, Documents, Color Documents.
| | 02:41 | Let's start rendering. I am going to
come over and click the Start Render
| | 02:43 | button. And when I do that I want you
to notice a few things. First, in the
| | 02:47 | Render Queue, you see that I have a
green bar going across for each clip that
| | 02:50 | shows me the progress of its render.
And you can see as it's rendering, the
| | 02:55 | green bar is going across the bottom
of the timeline and as it renders each
| | 02:58 | clip, the clip goes from a yellow clip
to purple indicating that's rendering.
| | 03:03 | Finally, to a green bar underneath each
clip indicating that has been completed.
| | 03:08 | Okay, sometimes Color can have problems
with screen redraw and you can see
| | 03:11 | that's happening right now in the
Render Queue with those clips icons not being
| | 03:15 | shown. These clips are still there,
they are just not showing up as icons right
| | 03:19 | now. One other thought is that render speed
is directly contributed to a couple of
| | 03:25 | factors. How many primary, secondary,
and other corrections that you have,
| | 03:29 | the speed of your graphics card as well
as the speed of the processors on your
| | 03:32 | machine. So if you have a two hour
long show, all shot in high-depth with
| | 03:37 | eight secondaries on every clip, it's
going to take a little while to render.
| | 03:40 | So now rendering has been completed and
I can see in the Render Queue that all
| | 03:43 | the clips say Complete. Down on the
timeline, each one of the clips has a green
| | 03:47 | bar underneath the clip indicating
that it has been completed. And above each
| | 03:50 | clip or above the entire timeline, I
have a green bar indicating that these
| | 03:54 | clips have been rendered.
Okay, so that was step one.
| | 03:57 | So the second step is we need to be
able to get instructions back to Final Cut
| | 04:00 | Pro about where this media now lives,
this newly rendered media. And to do
| | 04:04 | that, I am going to go up to the File
menu, down to Send To and choose Final
| | 04:09 | Cut Pro. So again, it's File > Send
To > Final Cut Pro. And when I do this,
| | 04:13 | Final Cut Pro is going to launch. And
what's going to happen is Final Cut Pro is
| | 04:18 | going to go back to the original Final
Cut Pro project file that this sequence
| | 04:21 | originated from and it's going to put a
new sequence in the Final Cut Browser.
| | 04:25 | But this time instead of the original
name, which it still has, it'll also add
| | 04:29 | in parenthesis 'from Color', indicating
that this is the rendered footage, this
| | 04:34 | is the rendered sequence from Color.
| | 04:36 | One thing may happen to you in your
own projects. If Color cannot find the
| | 04:40 | original Final Cut Pro project file,
it will create a blank untitled project
| | 04:45 | which to put this 'from Color' sequence
in. But let's open up the 'from Color'
| | 04:49 | sequence, just take a look. And there
it is. As I scroll through it, I now have
| | 04:54 | the graded clips. Let's just do a
quick comparison with the original. So for
| | 04:58 | example, I am at 25:18 in the 'from
Color' sequence. If I go back to the original
| | 05:02 | sequence and let's go to 25:18, so I
type it in. There is the original ugly
| | 05:08 | blue clip and in the 'from Color'
sequence we now have a color graded clip.
| | 05:13 | Congratulations! you have successfully
got a project back to Final Cut Pro and
| | 05:16 | are ready to output.
| | 05:17 | Hopefully, you got a lot out of
Getting Started With Color presented by
| | 05:20 | lynda.com. Be sure to check out
lynda.com's Apple Colors Essential title.
| | 05:24 | In that title, we'll explore the whole
application and get a little more down and
| | 05:27 | dirty with the various
rooms and tools in Color.
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